While Millbank swarmed with student protestors and Mumsnet buzzed angrily about the reductions to child benefit, away from the glare of publicity, disabled people and carers mourned alone. The cuts to benefits and services affecting us really are a matter of life and death, so why the wider silence? Perhaps it's because the benefits to be slashed are poorly understood and after years of tabloid scrounger stories the assumption is that people who claim them are living a lifestyle choice of state-sponsored ease.

Disability living allowance (DLA) is a cash benefit paid to people under 65 who meet its strict eligibility criteria for help with their care and/or mobility needs. It can't be claimed by just anyone, a bit of a bad back won't hold up to the intense scrutiny of a DLA claim. The forms run to 40-plus pages and demand detailed answers to deeply personal matters: how does the person go to the toilet, how do they feed themselves, wash, dress, get around, and more. Statements are expected from those who know the person claiming – a family member or carer. The GP will be asked to sign a section; physiotherapists, occupational therapists, social workers, surgeons, professors and more may be contacted; and medical records consulted. And if all that's not enough, a face-to-face assessment with a medical professional is arranged.

It's depressing stuff. The kind of thing most of us don't want to think about until it happens to us, but DLA is the benefit people claim when they are at their most vulnerable. A mother who's just been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and given a poor prognosis would claim DLA. The money may used to pay for someone to do practical aspects of childcare and to pay for transport to and from the hospital, perhaps via a Motability car. It goes straight back to the economy as it means that Dad doesn't have to give up his job to care for Mum and put the whole family on means-tested benefits. It's the benefit you claim for your miracle baby who survived despite being born far too soon but with special needs; the benefit you claim after breaking your back in a holiday accident and starting life afresh as a wheelchair user; as someone with schizophrenia tormented by voices.

They are all scenarios that can be pushed firmly away by those they haven't happened to. Maybe that's why the Financial Times astutely commented last year that cuts to disability benefits were "the easiest bits of welfare reform to sell", as people don't understand that these benefits are for them, only needed when they are most vulnerable and least able to fight for themselves.

It was bad enough when the plan was to reduce eligibility for DLA by 20%, despite the official fraud rate for the benefit being only 0.5%, but obscene now that the plan is to scrap DLA altogether and replace it with the personal independence payment (PIP), which will require expensive rebranding to ensure that even fewer people are eligible for it. And the proposal to remove the mobility component of DLA from people who live full-time in care homes whose local authorities fund their places shows how ruthless the attack on benefits really is.

Disabled people simply are not capable of demonstrating en masse in the same way students have done, so we need to be more creative in the ways we protest; encouraging people to petition against the flawed consultation being used to try to justify the removal of DLA and using events such as this weekend's One Month Before Heartbreak and more to ensure that the "not yet disabled" understand these are your benefits too, there to protect you when life is irrevocably altered by ill-health or an accident.

It might seem too dull or difficult to think about but, remember, we disabled people are the same as you, it's just that we've already experienced our life-altering situation and you are yet to do so.